MY FRIENDS AND MY STATUS WERE THERE

When I found out my HIV status, my friends were there for me. They went crazy, hysterical, emotionally uncontrollable, in need of therapy. They called each other for support after finding out from me, listening to me face to face, “I am not going to follow the traditional medicine; and if I die, I want to do it like the song, my way”. “Noooo!!!!” was their primal scream. “Yes” was my secured self’s answer. 

I am so grateful to have had and have such good friends that suffered for me the fear of dying because I would not take medicines to cure my Elvira syndrome (the name Ariel and I had for the ever changing and adaptable to different bodies’ virus.)  There were a few moments of collective crying: my friends and I letting the inner pains come out all at once;  without losing track of a lot of political and social awareness, consciousnes raising: Elvira was not only a plague; it was/is a political statement; including the possibilities that it was an experiment gone awry or a genocide act planned by sinister forces. Who knows! My friends were there.  

There was Barbara in Germany making sure no one saw my ex lover Günter, truly sick, peeing publicly inside a department store; and if you know her, there is not doubt, no one noticed the skeleton (he was truly emaciated) urinating on top of the expensive oriental rugs. With her ability to make rough things look smoothly, she took him out and walked away without any major commotion. 

And Robert going with me to the office of the leading researcher on the virus and blindness, sitting in that office surrounded by men who were blind, some of them looked like bags of bones, listening to me saying, “If I get to this point, euthanasia, please.” His coolness and level headed mentality allowed him to smiled at what was not a nice joke, but he smiled. 

These are two anecdotes -among many- that attest to my friends’ support and generosity during very difficult times. I write about them now, triggered by the lack of compassion that seems to guide todays political and health and caring for each other’s discussions.

There were also many friends who were sick and died.